


Gorgeous

by draculard



Series: Pellaeon/Thrawn 30 Day Ficlets [20]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Thrawn Trilogy - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Homesickness, M/M, Thrawn's Art Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:06:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26545702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Snooping through Thrawn's quarters, Pellaeon finds something interesting.
Relationships: Gilad Pellaeon/Thrawn | Mitth’raw’nuruodo
Series: Pellaeon/Thrawn 30 Day Ficlets [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904581
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Gorgeous

From the looks of him, Thrawn planned to lounge in bed with his datapad forever. He’d left only briefly to use the fresher and take a shower, and ever since, he’d been lying there with the datapad propped on his bare chest, scrolling through his cultural downloads and barely taking notice of Pellaeon at all.

Well, maybe the Grand Admiral could stay in bed all day, but it wasn’t something Pellaeon himself could stand. Especially not so early in the afternoon. He slipped out from beneath the top sheet and got dressed silently, but didn’t bother with his outer tunic or boots. He padded around Thrawn’s quarters, quietly examining anything that caught his eye.

There were holographic art pieces everywhere — works that Thrawn seemed to actively enjoy, Pellaeon thought, rather than works he wished to study. He examined each one in turn, but there was nothing that really called to him — he couldn’t tell if Thrawn kept these holos up because he found them beautiful or as mementos from battles won in the past.

He glanced at the bed, found Thrawn fully immersed in his datapad and looking half-asleep.

Well, if he wasn’t watching…

Pellaeon seated himself behind the cheap desk bolted to the durasteel floor across the room and started rifling through the drawers. He examined the liquor bottles in the bottom drawer for a moment, struggling to identify the alien script on one of them, opening the cork of another to smell what was inside. It was a spiced, earthy scent that reminded him of holidays back home.

He found a holoprojector of unfamiliar make and model in another drawer, and it took him an embarrassingly long time to figure out how to turn it on. The buttons clicked uselessly beneath his fingers for a minute before the projector suddenly sputtered to life, showing him a database of photos he didn’t recognize. There were no people in any of them, only snow-draped landscapes and shoddy-looking little structures, and oceans filled with ice.

Pellaeon shut it off, tucking the holoprojector away again. In another drawer, he found a sheaf of flimsi filled with holo-prints of yet more artwork. But this time, instead of discarding the art and looking for more interesting things to snoop through, he paused, entranced by what he saw. The print quality was low, but the paintings themselves were hypnotizing — and just like the photos he’d seen a moment ago, they were landscapes, abstracted and cold and achingly familiar.

He stared at them for a long time, flipping slowly through the sheets of flimsi and staring at each one in turn. When he’d gone through the whole stack twice, he pulled out the ones he liked best and set them aside, fanning them out on the desk so he could compare them.

“These are gorgeous,” he said.

Across the room, Thrawn glanced up from his datapad with a frown. He sat up straight when he saw where Pellaeon was sitting.

“What are you looking at?” he asked, his voice sharp.

Pellaeon looked up at him briefly, then waved his hand over the prints in a lazy gesture. “These paintings,” he said. “They were in your top—”

Thrawn threw the covers back and jumped out of bed, crossing the room in a heartbeat.

“—drawer,” Pellaeon finished, blinking. He sat back in the chair in surprise as Thrawn leaned over the desk next to him, studying the paintings with a frown. He watched as Thrawn reached for the prints, perhaps intending to shuffle them back into a stack and put them away; then Thrawn hesitated, his hand hovering over the first painting, and he drew back.

When he looked at Pellaeon, there was a faint hint of color on the tip of his nose, like he might be blushing.

“What did you say about them?” he asked, his voice strange.

“They’re gorgeous?” Pellaeon said, studying Thrawn’s face. He watched a hint of displeasure shade Thrawn’s eyes. “You disagree?”

“Ah…” Thrawn glanced back down at the paintings. For a long moment, he said nothing; then he shook his head. “I’m not qualified to say.”

“No?” said Pellaeon.

“They’re mine,” Thrawn said. His eyes shifted toward Pellaeon. “Pictures of home, as I remember it.”

There was a lengthy silence. Pellaeon studied the paintings again with fresh eyes.

“Ah,” he said. He ran his thumb over one of the landscapes before him, tracing the blue-white lines of the ice caps. When he looked up again, Thrawn was watching him intensely. “What?” Pellaeon asked. Then, when Thrawn didn’t answer right away, “Are you embarrassed?”

“No,” said Thrawn at once. He flicked the paintings out of Pellaeon’s reach with his fingertips. “I don’t allow other people to look at my artwork, that’s all. You never know what they might read from it.”

Pellaeon raised his eyebrows as Thrawn tapped the stack of flimsi against the desk.

“With you, however, I suppose it’s acceptable,” Thrawn said, not meeting his eyes. 

A hesitant smile spread over Pellaeon’s face; he tried not to blush.

“After all,” said Thrawn, “despite my best efforts, your art analysis skills remain woefully deficient.”

The smile snapped away at once. 


End file.
